


happy, truly happy

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Birthday, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 13:34:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15775122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: It's Maki's birthday, and she's ready to spend it alone, as she always does.Her friends have other plans.





	happy, truly happy

Maki Harukawa creates a false night inside her apartment, with all the lights off, to delude herself into thinking that today will never exist. The only candle she can use isn’t on a birthday cake - it’s a half burned down scented one that smells like a bonfire, and it comforts her when she can’t convince herself that the world outside isn’t out to get her. With all the doors locked, and the apartment itself a ghost of a building containing a ghost of a woman, Maki acknowledges her twentieth birthday with a sigh and a pint of ice cream that she doesn’t particularly want to eat.

It’s not like she can blame her friends for not making a big deal out of this. She never tells anyone her birthday - as far as they know, it’s just another dreary weekday marking the second beginning of a month that nobody really cares about anyway. They’re all probably preoccupied with Valentine’s Day, or the release of the shackles of New Year’s Resolutions that nobody ever keeps. She decides that it’s easier to group humanity into one, predictable circle, and place herself directly on the edge of it; almost inside, but without someone to pull her back to normalcy, just another wisp of wind in the cataclysm of everything.

And it’s a normal day, even she herself doesn’t find it special, until she hears a key turning in the lock - except, it’s not a key, because there’s only one key into this place, and it’s in her bag. So somebody is…breaking in? What could they want to steal? Unwashed bedsheets and empty bottles of red wine? Still, she thinks that her own logic won’t apply to a burglar, or crazed axe-murderer, and so she pulls the baseball bat from beside her bed and approaches the door, just as something inside the lock clicks and the light of the hallway bursts in.

Raising the bat, she tries to remove fear from her face, the way she was trained to do long, long ago; she stands with a wide stance, and glares at the intruder until their face becomes clear.

The intruders. Plural. And not really intruders, because they’re people that she knows. Kokichi, Shuichi, Kaito, Kaede…her friends?

“Kokichi!” Kaito whisper-shouts, “I thought you said she was out of the house?!”

“I said she _miiiight_ be out of the house,” Kokichi replies, talking about Maki as if she’s not standing right there, still holding the baseball bat.

“You said it like you were sure!”

“Well it’s your fault for interpreting it that way!”

“Boys, boys,” Kaede sighs, “stop fighting. Shuichi, please, calm your boyfriend down. And Kaito, don’t be so rude! We’re here for your girlfriend’s birthday and you haven’t even said hello!”

“Oh yeah,” Kaito puts his hand behind his head in an awkward gesture, “hey, Maki Roll.”

“What are you…?” Maki says. Kaede walks forward and smiles at her; she’s holding balloons and bags of…presents?

“We’re here for your birthday, silly! Kokichi thought you’d be out, so we were going to set up a surprise party for you to come back to!”

“And you thought that the surprise would be breaking and entering?”

“Come on Maki,” Kokichi says, “don’t think of it as _breaking and entering,_ think of it as…we’re just using the spare key that you haven’t got cut yet!”

“And this spare key is just your lock-picking tools?”

“Yeah, essentially.”

“Anyway, shut up Kokichi,” Kaito says, “we got you presents! And cake! And balloons, which Kaede had to blow up herself ‘cause I kept popping them in my face.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause it’s your birthday!”

“And how do you know that?”

“Kaede found out. We thought _hey, we’ve never celebrated Maki Roll’s birthday before,_ and we decided to find out when it was, and lucky we did it when we did, ‘cause this was only a week ago!”

“And why do you wanna celebrate?”

“‘Cause we’ve all been friends for like three years, so that’s three years worth of birthday parties that you’ve missed out on!”

Kaito runs up to Maki and takes her hand, leaving the others with the balloons and the cake and the pile of presents. He pulls her into her living room like it’s a part of his own house, putting his arm around her as they both sit on the sofa.

“I dunno if you truly didn’t wanna celebrate your birthday, and this was all Kaede’s idea…though I did help. But if you’re uncomfortable, we can all go.”

“I wouldn’t make you all leave after you’ve put in so much effort.”

“But are you okay with this?”

“I…I don’t know. I can’t say yes or no, because this isn’t a situation I’ve ever been in before. I’ve never had friends with me on my birthday. Hell, I didn’t even think I’d reach twenty.”

“Well, you’re here now, and we wanna support you. Besides, I heard Kaede baked that cake herself, and you know how good she is at shit like that!”

“I guess…I would like a slice.”

“That’s my girl!”

“Kaito?”

“Yeah?”

“Next year, on my birthday, let’s go away somewhere. I don’t care where - a little village in a little country somewhere far, far away from here, that’s my only specification. Let’s just…get our passports, and go.”

“I like the sound of that.”

Maki stands up, still holding his hand. She’s nervous; she’s never celebrated a birthday before, and with her friends around her, she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to act - she should probably smile, but she’s worried that it all won’t come naturally to her, especially when Kokichi opens the door to her apartment and lets in the rest of their sixteen-person friendship group.

That’s a lot of people. But…it’s people who aren’t here to hurt her. They’re people who appreciate her, and love her, and want to put on this not-quite-a-surprise party just to make her smile. And if birthdays have always been a time of loneliness before, then this is the perfect time and place to change that.

Surrounded by people who she’s starting to believe genuinely want her to be her best, Maki silently wishes herself a happy, truly happy, birthday.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this little birthday fic! I know Maki's birthday is in February, but it's my wonderful friend Karen's birthday today, so this is for her! She's amazing and her art is so good - check out her twitter [@MadKaren3](https://twitter.com/MadKaren3). Happy birthday!


End file.
